Debt
by Fyrie
Summary: A life saved after a moment of carelessness. A debt incurred because of the same. Two families with a grudge against one another. A fee that is impossible to pay. The battle of wills between Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley has only just begun.


It had felt like a hundred thousand icy knives plunging into his throat, making him choke and gasp, pain boring into his lungs, reducing his vision to spots of darkness as he was pulled downwards.

Shards of ice were still biting into his fingers, like natural stinging needles stained crimson, his robes heavy, dragging him down, down further and deeper.

This is it, he had thought through the haze of pain, this is how I'm going to die.

But the reality transpired to be so much more humiliating.

Gangly arms and large, freckled hands grasping at him and pulling, drawing and dragging him back towards the surface through the cracked level of the ice.

Pushed out of the sharp-lipped maw in the flawless white surface, he had fallen, sprawled on the surface, helpless, drenched and shivering, a distorted imitation of a newborn child.

Coughing and vomiting lake water, his frantic housemates swarming around him like flies on a carcass, he had barely been aware of his rescuer climbing out of the gap and giving him a contemptuous look, before walking away.

His rescuer.

When he had been informed of the identity of that person, returning to the lake and finishing himself off had seemed like the best option.

Weasley.

Not even one of his own housemates.

Not even a damned Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.

Weasley.

One of the pitiful members of the most pitiful of excuses for a pureblood family.

It was all the fault of his housemates, he knew. 

Had they not challenged him to go out on the lake's surface, had they not dared him to tread on thin ice that they had been warned to avoid, had they not stood by and let him plunge through the surface, leaving him to drown...

It was entirely their fault.

Lying on his back in his bed in the Slytherin dungeon, Draco Malfoy stared darkly up at the canopy of his bed, his fingers fisting rhythmically into the blankets that spread over him.

Weasley had saved his life.

Weasley.

What could he possibly want? 

Did he want some little piece of glory, so he could hold some kind of thrall over Draco himself? 

Well, if he thought that was the case, he was most assuredly wrong. 

Draco knew that he had no qualms about hexing the irritating, obnoxious ginger-haired idiot beyond recognition, life-debt or not.

Turning onto his stomach with a violence most often reserved for shows of temper, Draco pressed his face into the pillow, a litany of colourful curses muffled by the heavy fabric. His eyes, though, remained uncovered.

Why did it have to be him? Them?

Why did he have to be the one to fall through the ice? 

Why did Weasley have to be the only person with the bloody-minded stupidity to dive in after him and haul him back to the surface, leaving him sprawled there like a drowned rat?

Malfoy knew that he would have been content to have even Longbottom save him, over Weasley. 

The only person who would have been worse than Weasley would be Potter and, had that been the case, Draco knew he would have walked straight back to the lake and hurled himself in to finish the job.

Humiliating enough to fall through the ice, worse yet to flail like a drowning puppy before being dragged beneath the surface, but being rescued by a Weasley was quite simply the pinnacle of mortification.

Better to have drowned.

Turning back onto his back, he folded his hands behind his head, exhaling a sigh of frustration loud enough for all of his housemates to hear and hopefully feel guilty about, due to their lack of a rescue.

After all, he had two personal guardians, the brainless giants of his year, and yet, neither of them had deigned to leap into the icy waters of the lake to save their patron and he knew his father would not be pleased.

About any of it.

Especially not to know that he was father to a son rescued by a poverty-stricken, Muggle-lover who just happened to be the best friend of the one-time Vanquisher of the Dark Lord.

Yes, his father would know about it all already, which made him feel so much more pleased with the situation, although he knew he had the benefit of having the words to twist the situation, reducing the absurdity of the situation and making him look marginally less idiotic. 

Briefly, Draco wondered if anyone in the rest of Slytherin would even notice if he hexed the small knot who had been content to watch him die.

It was utterly infuriating!

The ones who were loyal to him had stood by, as moronic as they looked, his frenzied cries for help going unheeded. The one whom he hated and from whom the feeling was reciprocated had helped him.

He owed Weasley his life! Him! Draco Malfoy! He owed a Weasley the one thing he could never pay back! 

It was obscene even to contemplate it. 

Hopefully, Weasley would forget it. Or at least pretend that nothing had happened.

That would be tolerable.

If Weasley made nothing of it, then he knew he would be able to forget; he would be able to ignore the fact that the gangly, ridiculous-looking scarecrow of a Gryffindor had been the one to save his life.

"Stop thinking about it," he muttered to himself, untangling his finger from the knot behind his head and smoothing the rumpled blanket over his body. "It's nothing. He wanted to look a hero to impress his beloved Potty. Don't waste time thinking about him. Get some sleep. Quidditch training tomorrow."

Closing his eyes, Draco opened his arms willingly to Morpheus, pushing all thoughts of Weasley aside, as the soporific night gathered him close. 

Instead of his familiar content rest, though, his dreams were haunted by nightmares of chilling blackness, ebbing and flowing around him, strangling him with watery fists that no mortal fingers could pry away, making him cry out in his sleep.

***

"You don't look well, Draco," a female voice simpered from behind him, where he sat on the sofa in front of the fire, in the common room. It was grating enough to pull his attention from the flames. 

Leaning against the arm of the couch, his eyes were blood-shot and ringed with dark shadows, his face paler than pale, making him look closer to vampire in origin than he usually did, only lacking in blood smeared on his lips.

Although, in his present mood, he couldn't truly guarantee that they would remain bloodless for long. 

Gritting his teeth, forcing himself into anti-homicidal mode, Draco turned to Pansy Parkinson, smiling thinly without showing any teeth. "Well, you would think I might look a little off-colour as I almost drowned yesterday," he replied dryly.

"Oooh! Draco!" she practically squealed, hurrying around the couch and sitting down beside him, grasping his hands in her larger clammy ones. "Do you need me to look after you and make you feel better?"

What had started out as a bad day looked to get worse, and he hadn't even stepped outside the common room yet. A sleepless night fractured by too many nightmares to count, leaving him exhausted and looking like he was dying of some wasting disease, topped off with a lusty Parkinson girl ready and willing to accost him. 

It really wasn't the way he wanted his morning to go.

"No, Pansy," he snapped irritably, jerking his hand free from hers. "Why don't you go and hang off Crabbe or Goyle? Last I saw, they were looking desperate enough to take you on."

He was unsurprised when Pansy - after staring at him in incomprehension for several minutes - released an anguished sob and fled from the common room.

A smirk lifted one side of his lips. 

All right, maybe the day wouldn't be so bad after all. 

Running a hand over his face, he pushed himself to his feet and stalked towards the doorway that led into the dormitory he shared with the other boys in his year, his irritation returning.

Having woken early, he wanted nothing more than to be out and about, making life for the younger students and Gryffindors hell, but - as usual - Crabbe and Goyle were the last to emerge.

"Crabbe! Goyle!" 

It was almost like watching the resurrection of the undead, the heaving struggle of each of them to push through the surface of sleep, the blankets crumbling into heaps around them as they blinked blearily around, searching out the face of their leader.

"Up," he growled. "Now."

Zombies seemed to be the perfect analogy for his two companions, their shambling shuffle as they blindly moved to obey his commands less than human, heavy eyes barely open as they groped for their clothing. 

Returning to the common room, he walked down to the fireplace, pacing back and forth on the rug, the tread of a starved and caged predator, the glitter in his eyes warning no one to dare approach.

It seemed like an eternity before his bodyguards wandered out of the dormitories, looking somnolent, their eyes reflecting no intelligence whatsoever; and Draco thanked his stars that he wasn't inbred.

"What's goin' on?"

He flashed a warning glare at them, which slashed through their words and was quite enough to stop them from asking further questions, stupid, pointless questions that would only serve to annoy him more.

"It's morning. I'm hungry," he replied crisply. "Breakfast."

"But it's only sev..."

"I said," Draco's voice hardened. "It's morning. I'm hungry. Breakfast."

Crabbe and Goyle exchanged puzzled looks, perhaps conversing on a primitive level that he could not understand, then both shrugged and followed him towards the door of the common room.

He didn't even look back to see if they were following, his irritation at them intense, but not enough for him to breakfast on his own. No Malfoy ever did anything alone, not even make his way to breakfast in the Great Hall.

First of his house and first of his year into the hall, he couldn't help flashing a spiteful glance in the direction of the Gryffindor table a pang of... something he could not identify stabbing sharply beneath his ribs when a pair of blue eyes under a thatch of uncombed ginger defiantly met his.

Allowing his lip to curl, he snorted, stalking towards the table.

Yet, even as he sat down, he could feel eyes on him and didn't need to be told who had moved from looking to blatantly staring at him, his skin prickling with insect's feet of discomfort, which he tried to mask with further irritation.

It was easy to act irritated to conceal other emotions, so reliably and so consistently, although part of him was forcing down the urge to order Crabbe and Goyle to take the Weasel aside and pound his face into an entirely different shape.

What did he damn well want? 

Gratitude? 

Not bloody likely.

One did not remain a true Slytherin and a Malfoy by thanking mere Muggle- and Mudblood-lovers for such trivialities as saving one's life.

Flashing a black look in Weasley's direction, he saw the red-haired boy scowl back at him, twisting his face until it looked even more ridiculous than it usually did. Of course, the Mudblood beside him patted Weasley's arm, no doubt voicing feeble exclamations that Weasley was above Draco himself.

It was a vile thought to contemplate.

Interesting, though, Draco noted dryly, that the one time he specifically looked in the direction of the Fabulous Three, the one time Wonder-Boy was sitting with his back to the Slytherin table, was the one time Draco didn't have the urge to glare at him.

The gangly red-haired target was now the focus of his attention, which worried him as much as it irritated him.

Forcing his attention to the bowl of cooling porridge in front of him, Draco scowled at the pale, mealy mass in the bowl, jabbing his spoon into it with unnecessary violence, imagining it to be the gormless freckled face of the idiot sitting on the opposite side of the hall.

It wasn't meant to happen like this!

He wasn't meant to be tormented by the grinning fool from the fastest breeding family of twits in the wizarding world. He was meant to stalk about, doing the tormenting, mocking those around him with derisive words. 

Now, Weasley had achieved what he never had managed: the idiot had crawled right under Draco's skin and was making his presence quite uncomfortably felt, when under any other circumstances, he would have been bluntly ignored.

Savagely shoving porridge into his mouth, barely taking time to swallow, Draco cleared the bowl rapidly, forcing down some pumpkin juice, trying to force away the sick feeling spreading in his gut.

He owed a Weasley and it was _affecting_ him.

It wasn't that he cared. 

That would never happen, but he was being tortured by it.

He _owed_ a Weasley. 

Slamming his spoon down on the table with enough force to earn surprised looks from Crabbe and Goyle, he sloshed some more pumpkin juice into his goblet, excess spilling over, soaking the sleeves of his robes.

"Draco, are you…?"

"Ask me if I'm all right and I'll turn you into a pig," Draco spat angrily, scowling over the goblet at the Weasel, the Mudblood and the unruly back of Potty's head on the far side of the hall. 

His eyes kept coming back to that oblivious, inbred face. Every one of the Weasleys looked the same to Draco, but this one: he could not help but stare at him, something he had never done nor imagined in his worst fantasies.

What was he meant to do?

After all, it would hardly be fitting for a Malfoy to admit to owing a Weasley, yet it would be even worse for the family pride for a Malfoy to be forced into paying off a Weasley as well.

His father would kill him on both counts.

He had to get rid of the debt, the thoughts surrounding the debt, everything. It would have to be done at once, in any way possible to ensure as little fall-out and as few repercussions as possible. 

If he settled it quietly, without anyone knowing, wiped it from the mind of Weasley himself, as well as the witnesses, all would be well.

No.

It wouldn't.

Draco uttered a curse, which earned him another peculiar look from the two boys flanking him. He wouldn't be able to wipe Weasley's mind, because he – Draco – would still be aware of what he owed.

Yet he knew he could not pay the boy off without it looking deeply suspicious.

Malfoy handing money to Weasley? For no reason?

No, he would never openly admit to the shame of being saved by Weasley. 

It would have to be done furtively, if he was to be sure that it remained out of the ears of his father, which meant that Crabbe, Goyle and the ginger scarecrow's two friends could not witness it.

Reaching down into his pockets, the fabric of his sleeve clinging to his sticky hand, Draco fumbled around, withdrawing a small drawstring purse that he always carried everywhere, clinking as he withdrew it.

There would be more money in the small bag than the Weasleys would see in a decade. It would suffice. He would pay him, then Obliviate him and all would be well and even.

Directing his attention back to the table, slipping the purse out of sight, Draco reached over and snagged a piece of toast, to all intents and purposes looking like he was focussing solely on the bread as he scraped butter onto it.

In truth, though, he was scowling across the hall from beneath his brows, watching for any sign that the Gruesome Threesome would be making any moves to depart the hall any time soon.

As soon as they did…

Goyle had his fork stacked with bacon and egg halfway to his mouth when Draco jerked both his 'bodyguards' to their feet, leaving a slew of food and pumpkin juice down both their robes.

"Dr…"

"Shut up."

"B…"

Whipping around, Draco grabbed the taller boy's robes and yanked Goyle's face, tomato sauce smeared around his mouth, down close to his. 

"I said shut up, Goyle," he said in a low, cold and hard voice. "I have something I need to take care of. You and beef for brains are going to distract Potter and his beloved Mudblood."

Beyond the stupidity of the boy's face, Draco was sure he saw a Lumos cast. He knew what the next words from Goyle's mouth would be before the larger brute even drew breath to speak them.

"What kind of distraction?" he asked, cracking his knuckles.

"Nothing messy. Enough to give me time to… pay the Weasley idiot back for the little debacle yesterday."

His tone and slow smirk implied one thing, the very thing that made Crabbe and Goyle nudge each other and snigger like they might understand what he was talking about. Meanwhile the purse resting against his hip attested to the fact that he was being more literal than he ever had in his life.

Following the wonder-Gryffs out of the Great Hall, Draco muttered instructions to both his companions, each of whom lumbered onwards to do their assigned task, as the mudblood and the boys parted company.

Taking his place at the central point, where two passages crossed, he only hoped that Crabbe had taken the time to charge his brain cell during the night and would thereby grab the right person.

He heard the girl yell out in outraged indignation from further down the halls, a smirk curling his lip, then the pounding of feet and a second shout of protest a heartbeat before Weasley rounded the corner and slammed squarely into him.

"Looking for something, Weasley?" he inquired, hoping his casual attitude would work to his benefit, leaning against the wall, his expression one of superior arrogance, although he was mentally hoping that he wasn't about to be hit.

"Malfoy!" Weasley's face seemed to go from angry red to flaming purple. "You…"

"You're very observant," Draco said, smirking. "Now, I think you want your friends to be all right, don't you?" Blue eyes narrowed and freckled hands clenched into large and rather intimidating fists. In the past year, it appeared that the carrot-top had sprouted upwards a great deal and Draco felt oddly dwarfed beside him. Wisely, he took a step back. "Back off, Weasley, and they don't get damaged."

"What have you done with Hermione?" Fists in the front of his robes almost hauled Draco off his feet and he was slammed against the wall, his ribs jarring painfully. 

"I said," Draco repeated, his cold tone shaken somewhat. He pushed Weasley's hands from his robes violently, shoving the taller boy back. "Back _off_, Weasley. You want them hurt?"

Blue eyes flashed angrily and Draco almost laughed. The poor twit really did think he was intimidating. "You hurt one hair on their heads, Malfoy, and I swear…"

"Oh shut up, Weasley. I needed a word with you, nothing more."

Suspicion ran across Weasley's face over the anger, a line appearing between his brows, darkened by yet more freckles. "What are you on about, Malfoy?"

Nodding towards a door, Draco inclined his head. "Not something that I want to talk about in public, especially not with you, Weasel," he replied in a conversational tone.

"Give me a reason."

"You like your girlfriend the way she looks, don't you?"

Weasley's expression told him that once his Mudblood was back by his side, Draco would be on the receiving end of some severe pain. Forcing down unpleasant thoughts of that possible fate, Draco smirked as Weasley strode past him, fists clenching by his sides.

Entering the room, an old and empty classroom, a few desks stacked by the walls, dust coating the floor, Weasley whipped around to face him as soon as he closed the door behind them, as if expecting to be hit in the back by a curse. Draco reached into his pocket and withdrew the purse, tossing it to him.

Weasley caught it automatically. Blue eyes stared down in incomprehension, then looked back at Draco. "What the hell are you playing at, Malfoy?" he demanded, suspiciously. "What is this?"

"Payment," Draco said curtly, spitting the two syllables out as if they had left a foul taste in his mouth. Weasley stared at him. "You did me a favour yesterday, Weasel. I'm paying you what I owe."

Blue eyes stared at him and Draco briefly wondered if the rumours that all the Weasleys shared a single brain-cell might, in fact, be true. "You're paying me because I saved your life?"

Grimacing at the sound of the words aloud, Draco nodded curtly.

"You think this is what you do? You think you can pay me?"

"You have no money, Weasley. Enjoy it while you have it."

The look of disgust and anger that crossed Weasley's face was as impressive as Potter's when he was mocked. "You think money makes everything all right, Malfoy? You think that's how everything works? Someone does something and you can just pay it away? I don't think so, Malfoy. I'm not one of your minions who jumps when you say jump and takes whatever table scraps you throw."

The purse was hurled back at him, several galleons spilling from it and bouncing deafeningly on the floor. 

Draco was certain every thundering, furious beat of his heart was audible in the silence that hung on the room. He could feel patches of heat spread on his cheeks, a sure sign of anger and humiliation. "No one asked you to play the hero, Weasley," he sneered. "Trying to match Potter, were you?"

"I did what any halfway decent person would do, Malfoy," Weasley spat back, the disgust on his face deeper than Draco had ever seen it before. "Not that you would know anything about that."

"I didn't ask for your help," Draco snarled, his anger growing. "You did something for me. I pay you. That's how the world works."

"You pay me?" Weasley laughed, very different from his normal, good-humoured and friend-of-a-hero laugh. It was cold. Hard. He took two steps towards Draco, glaring down at him. "Malfoy, just think about it. There's no amount of money that I will e_ver_ accept from you for _anything_. You can't buy me off just because your daddy is rich."

"So what? I wait for a chance to save your wretched life? I don't think so, Weasley. Take the money." His hand slid beneath his robes to claim his wand, his eyes fixed on Weasley's face.

"The hell I will," Weasley growled.

"Take it, dammit, Weasley!" Whipping his wand out, Draco directed it at the other boy, whose wand hand somehow made it into his own hand. Barely three feet apart and wands drawn, they stared at one another.

Draco felt dizzy, reeling, uncertain how to deal with this development. He had assumed that Weasley would greedily grab the gold with both hands and run, but this, this defiance, this pride that was so familiar, yet so… strange…

His moment of hesitation was all Weasley needed, though.

"_Expelliarmus_!"

Rocketed backwards, Draco yelled out in pain when his back slammed hard against the door, his wand sailing from his fingers. Struggling to sit upright, his limbs tangled in his robes, a panicked sound escaped him. 

The constrictive wrap of the robes on his body reminded him a little too much of the same fabric pulling him and weighting him down, unable to escape the clutches of the icy waters of the lake.

A harsh hand, the same damnable hand, yanked him up by his robes, his wand gripped in Weasley's other hand. "Don't think you can buy me off, Malfoy," Weasley said, his voice shaking with anger. "There's only one thing you have that I want."

Despite the urge to cry out and kick at the taller youth, Draco swallowed hard and asked in as cool and even a voice as he could muster, "And what would that be, Weasley? A new house?"

Weasley smiled. Cold. Without showing any teeth. "Nothing you can give me by choice, Malfoy."

The hand holding him upright released Draco's robes and the Slytherin stumbled back, colliding with the wall. "You're mad!" he exclaimed bitterly, clutching at his bruised side. "Nuts!"

"Yeah, might be," Weasley agreed, directing both wands at Draco, who flinched back automatically. "Now, though, you can keep your trained monkeys away from my friends, right, Malfoy?"

"Tell me what I can give you."

"There's something I never thought I'd hear you say."

Draco felt a combination of anger and… desperation? Why was the red-haired bastard making things so difficult? "Tell me, Weasley," he demanded, his voice taking on a pleading note he had never heard in it before. Frightening, it was. "Please."

Weasley smiled again. "That's the first step," he said, hurling Draco's wand at the Slytherin's feet. It bounced once, twice, hollow-sounding in the silence. "The only thing I want from you is your pride."

Then he was gone and Draco was left, half-slumped and shaken, against the wall of the deserted classroom, dust hanging on the pale slats of daylight that crept through the window.


End file.
